[mnet-devel] needed: MetaTracker operators

[Zooko Zooko]

A MetaTracker is an Mnet server that introduces Mnet nodes to one another.

We need three reliable MetaTrackers operated by independent people, ideally 
living in different geographic and political places from one another.

It is not a good idea to have more than three MetaTrackers, because then nodes 
might not get introduced to each other since they are talking to different 
MetaTrackers.  Therefore we want only the three *best* and most reliable and 
most independent MetaTracker operators.


Here are the requirements of MetaTrackers:

MetaTrackers really ought to have a stable IP address.  Whenever the 
MetaTracker's IP address changes, then it becomes unreachable until at least 
one of the bootpage ops upgrades their bootpage to contain the new IP address.

The bandwidth used by a MetaTracker is proportional to the number of Mnet 
nodes, is fairly light, and is controllable with the bandwidth-throttler 
feature.

The disk and RAM usage of the MetaTracker is little and is controllable with a 
"how many clients to track at once" setting.

The MetaTracker is freshly rewritten source code in the new v0.7 source code 
tree.  Therefore it is less stable than the v0.6.2 source code that the 
current nodes are based on.  MetaTracker operators should be prepared to deal 
with the occasional cry for help: "Ack!  Everything has broken!  Please 
upgrade your metatracker to this fixed version of the source code!".

In order to minimize that happening, I am about to make a branch of the v0.7 
code which will not receive any changes unless those changes are necessary to 
fix a bug in the MetaTracker.  MetaTracker operators can run that semi-stable 
branch.


So if you have a reliable server, please consider running a MetaTracker!  If 
more than three people volunteer, then we will have to determine who is the 
most reliable.  Or flip coins or something.  It would be preferable for 
volunteers to be people that the Mnet project is not already dependent upon 
(such as Mnet coders and bootpage ops), because we want to "decentralize" the 
vulnerability of the Mnet project to a particular person getting hit by a bus 
or hired by an evil megacorp or whatever.

Please send e-mail to <zooko at zooko.com> or <mnet-devel at lists.sourceforge.net>.

Regards,

Zooko



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